Outside the pagoda, he asked, “Who maintains this place?”

“It is part of a larger temple,” said Khin Myo. “The monks come here to take care of the Buddha.”

“But I don’t see anyone,” Edgar said.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Drake,” she said. “They are here.”

There was something about the loneliness of the place that unsettled him, and he wished to ask her more, about what she was saying, what she was praying for, why she had stopped here and not at any of the other countless pagodas. But she and Nok Lek had begun to talk to each other again.

They mounted their ponies and began to walk. At the top of the hill, they stopped to look back over the plain. Despite the low altitude, the flatness of the valley afforded them a view of their journey, a lonely country of empty fields and twisting streams. Small hamlets clasped rivers and roads, all of the same brown color of earth. In the far distance, they could discern the grid of Mandalay, and farther, the snaking course of the Irrawaddy.

The road descended over the other side of the hill, and they followed a small rise to a group of houses which lay at the base of a larger mountain. There they stopped and Nok Lek dismounted. “I will buy food. Maybe we don’t see anyone for a long time.” Edgar sat on the pony and waited. The boy disappeared into one of the houses.

Some chickens wandered in the road, pecking at the dust. A man lounging on a platform in the shade of a tree called out to Khin Myo and she answered him.

“What did he say?” Edgar asked.

“He asked where were we going.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said we are riding south, to Meiktila, but we came this way for surveying.”

“Why lie?”

“The fewer people who know we are going into the mountains the better. This is a lonely place. Usually we travel with an escort. But because of circumstances, this is somewhat…unofficial. If anyone wished to attack, we have no help.”

“Are you worried?”

“Worried? No. Are you?”

“Me? A bit. On the ship from Prome, there were some prisoners, dacoits. Fierce-looking fellows.”

Khin Myo studied him for a moment, as if weighing what she should say. “It is safe. Nok Lek is a very good fighter.”

“I don’t know how reassuring that is. He is a child. And I hear they travel in bands of twenty.”

“You shouldn’t think of such things. I have made this trip many times.”

Nok Lek returned with a basket, which he fastened to the back of Edgar’s saddle. He bid good-bye to the man in the shade, and hissed his pony forward. Edgar followed and raised his hand in greeting. The man said nothing as the Englishman passed.

From the basket rose the pungent scent of fermented tea and spices.

The trail rose steeply, and as it did, the vegetation changed, the low scrub-brush giving way to taller plants, nourished by mists that thickened as they ascended. They climbed a spur coated in a low forest, humid like the plains near Rangoon. Birds flitted through the trees, chirping loudly, and around them the movement of larger creatures could be heard through fallen leaves.

A sudden crash, and Edgar turned quickly. Another, this time louder, and then the distinct sounds of breaking branches, something moving fast through the underbrush. “Nok Lek, Khin Myo! Watch out, something is coming!” Edgar pulled his pony to a stop. Nok Lek heard it too, and slowed his mount. Louder. Edgar looked around him, for something, a knife, a gun, but he knew he had nothing.

Louder. “What is it?” he whispered, and suddenly, in front of them, a wild boar bolted across the trail and into the bushes on the other side.

“A bloody pig,” cursed Edgar. Nok Lek and Khin Myo laughed and their pony began walking again. Edgar tried to force a chuckle, but his heart was beating wildly. He hissed at his pony.

As the slope steepened, the path broke off along the flank of the mountain and emerged from the trees, affording the first view in several hours. Edgar was struck by how the scenery had changed. The opposite hillside rose so steeply that he felt that with a running leap he could touch the moss-coated branches on the facing slope, yet to walk there would involve a precipitous descent and ascent through impenetrable jungle. In the valley below, thicker vegetation hid any signs of a river or habitation, yet as the trail rose, the mountains opened onto another valley, where the floor flattened in a series of narrow, terraced fields. Far below, in the staircases of paddy, a pair of figures worked knee deep in water that reflected the sky, transferring iridescent seedlings to the clouds.

Khin Myo saw Edgar watching the farmers. “The first time I traveled into the Shan Hills,” she said, “I was surprised to see rice growing, while around Mandalay the land lay barren. The hills catch the rain clouds that pass up the Irrawaddy River basin, and even in the dry season, they take enough water for a second planting.”

“I thought there was a drought.”

“On the Plateau there is. There has been a terrible drought, for several years now. Whole villages are starving, and moving into the lowlands. The hills may catch the clouds, but they also keep them. If the monsoon rain doesn’t move onto the Plateau, it stays dry.”

“And the farmers below, are they Shan?”

“No, another group.” She spoke to Nok Lek in Burmese. “Palaung, he says, they live in these valleys. They have their own language, dress, music. It is quite confusing, actually, even for me. The hills are like islands, each has its own tribe. The longer they have been separated, the more different they become. Palaung, Paduang, Danu, Shan, Pa-O, Wa, Kachin, Karen, Karenni. And those are just some of the biggest tribes.”

“I never…” said Edgar. “Fancy that, hill islands.”

“That is what Anthony Carroll calls them, he says they are like Mr. Darwin’s islands, only here it is culture that changes, not the beaks of birds. He wrote a letter about that to your Royal Society.”

“I didn’t know…”

“They haven’t told you everything,” she said. “That is not the least of it.” She told him then of the Doctor’s studies, of his collections and correspondences, of the letters that he collected each month from Mandalay, letters from distant biologists, physicians, even chemists– chemistry was an old passion. “Half the mail that comes to Upper Burma is scientific correspondence for Anthony Carroll. And the other half is music for him.”

“And do you help him with these projects then?”

“Perhaps, a little. But he knows so much more. I only listen.” And Edgar waited for her to explain further, but she turned back to the path.

They rode on. It grew dark. New unfamiliar sounds shifted in the darkness, the burrowing of scavengers, the howls of wild dogs, the rough voices of barking deer.

Finally, in a small clearing, they stopped and dismounted, unloading a military tent that Nok Lek had brought. They pitched the tent in the center of the clearing, and Nok Lek disappeared inside to arrange the bags. Edgar remained outside, near Khin Myo. Neither spoke. They were tired and the song of the forest was deafening. At last Nok Lek emerged from the tent and told them to enter. Edgar slipped under a mosquito net and arranged his mattress. Only then did he notice the pair of double-barreled shotguns propped up against the inside of the tent, their cocked hammers reflecting the ounce of moonlight that trickled in through a hole in the canvas.

It took two days to climb through the steep jungle and over a mountain pass. In front of them the descent was brief, and steep, and softened into the Plateau, a vast patchwork of field and forest. In the distance, at the edge of the plain, another set of hills rose, gray and undefined.

They descended a narrow, stony path, the ponies’ hooves searching for footholds in the soil. Edgar let his body rock loosely in the saddle, relishing the stretching of muscles tightened by days of riding and sleeping on the ground. It was late, and the sun cast their shadows long into the valley. Edgar looked back at the mountains, at the crest of mist that capped the peaks and spilled over the slopes. In the fading light of dusk, Shan farmers worked in the fields, wearing wide hats and trousers that flowed about their feet. The rocking of the pony was slow and rhythmic, and Edgar felt his eyes close, the fantasy world of crags and temples disappearing briefly, and he thought, Perhaps I am dreaming, It is all just like a child’s fairy tale. Soon it was dark, and they galloped through the night, and he felt himself slumping forward on his pony.